Celebrities

ROWAN ATKINSON, the British actor, spoke out recently against Britain’s draconian hate speech law, which has led to hundreds of arrests for those who have violated liberal rules of etiquette, such as the man who called a police horse “gay.” The “right to insult and offend” is basic to British tradition, Atkinson said. He stated:

“‘I’m not intolerant,’ say many softly-spoken, highly educated liberal-minded people. ‘I’m only intolerant of intolerance.’ And people tend to nod sagely and say, ‘Oh yes, wise words, wise words.’ And yet if you think about this supposedly inarguable statement for longer than five seconds you realize that all it is advocating is the replacement of one kind of intolerance with another.” Read More »

WHAT happens to a woman as lovely, talented and patrician as Helena Bonham Carter when she embraces modern Hollywood? She becomes a raging nihilist. See Kidist Paulos Asrat’s post on Bonham Carter’s latest role as Miss Havisham in a remake of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. Forty horses couldn’t drag me to see this movie.

Remember how charming Bonham Carter was as Lucy Honeychurch in the film version of E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View? She’s now more Medusa with snakes in her hair than Miss Honeychurch.

CHARLIZE THERON, who is single, appears with a stunning designer handbag and her adopted son, Jackson. Imagine these two walking together in an airport 16 years from now. Will they even be speaking to each other by then?

Your post on the women reclaiming lost identities as Southern Belles was a fine counterpoint to the stories about the untimely death of singer Amy Winehouse. I have a hunch that Winehouse’s unhappy life and wretched death are a watershed of sorts, a point at which the tide begins to recede. Read More »

Lawrence Austersays this about Tiger Woods, whose wife is now reportedly preparing for divorce:

His excessively toned and shaped physique–a body-builder’s physique which by the way does not fit the aesthetic of golf–adds to the negative impression I’ve always had of him as a kind of machine, a walking corporation and product endorsement, not a human being. He’s manufactured. And inside that synthetic, manufactured image, there is the reality of his tawdry sex life, in which he’s engaged in the nonstop pursuit and management of multiple girlfriends at the same time.

So, he’s a mechanical man on the outside, and a relentless, soulless skirt chaser on the inside. This is the reality of Woods.